ward5 By Allan Fox: Last Saturday, former WBA 168lb champion Andre Ward (28-0, 15 KOs) emerged on Twitter to squelch the talk of him facing unbeaten light heavyweight Sullivan Barrera (17-0, 12 KOs) on March 26th in Oakland, California.

Ward said there wasn’t a signed contract for the fight, and the news was premature. Barrera fired back a Tweet, telling Ward to stop with the excuses. According to Ring TV, Ward then said “@sullivanbarrera, Only time I’m gonna respond to you buddy. You can call us JC Penny, we ain’t got no money for you. Not getting rich off us.’

The money that Barrera would make for a fight against Ward is said to be $350,000, according to RingTV. If the $350K money is legit, it’s hard to imagine Barrera getting rich off that amount. After all the training expenses and taxes are taken out of that amount, it wouldn’t be surprising if all that’s left is $88,000 for Barrera of the original $350K.

The question is does Ward really want the Barrera fight or is he just looking for an excuse to go in another direction towards a safer target. There are rumors that the backup plan for Ward’s next fight is 31-year-old former world title challenger Marco Antonio Periban. He’s a fighter that was recently knocked out by James DeGale in 3 rounds.

Periban isn’t even a light heavyweight. To be sure, Periban can obviously gain a little weight like Ward’s last opponent super middleweight Paul Smith to fight him at light heavyweight, but that would hardly be a good fight for HBO and definitely not a good fight to prepare Ward for a title shot against IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev. Ward is supposed to fight Kovalev later this year on HBO.

@andreward 😂😂😂 you have no more excuse no break nail signing contract & pull out combat #jcpenney #jayz #rocnation pic.twitter.com/VDttzypNg0

— Sullivan Barrera (@sullivanbarrera) January 10, 2016

“@andresofward, we both need fight. Don’t get hurt now,” Barrera said.
“I think that all the Ward talk about ‘pound for pound,’ greatness, calling out fighters without any intention of following through, now that he has made the move to 175, all that talk should be backed up,” Barrera’s trainer Abel Sanchez said to RingTV.com. “Barrera has 17 fights, he is no killer, yet, if Ward is afraid to fight Barrera, who can he fight to make the statement that he belongs at 175 or that he is worthy of a Kovalev fight?”

It’s unclear what the hang-up is with Barrera-Ward. Is it money on Ward’s part that is keeping the fight from being made, or is Ward not excited about fighting Barrera? It’s definitely a dangerous fight for Ward. He’s not had to fight anyone with the kind of punching power that Barrera possesses since his win over Carl Froch in 2011.

That was five years ago. Ward isn’t the young fighter he was back then, and it might be difficult for him to get out of the way of Barrera’s big power shots. Paul Smith appeared to stun Ward with a hard right hand in the 7th round, and Smith was just a flabby super middleweight for his light heavyweight fight against Ward last year.

Ward definitely can’t fight Periban to make a statement that he belongs at 175. That would be a terrible fight. It would be a bad deal for HBO, because they just signed Ward to a 3-fight deal, and that would be a TV worthy fight. Granted, HBO would still have two other fights on Ward’s contract where he might give them quality fights, but you can’t consider Periban a quality opponent, because he’s not even ranked in the top 15 at super middleweight.

HBO has shown a lot of bad match-ups occasionally, but it would be a real bad one if Ward were to fight Periban in a main event of one of their cards rather than the fight being buried on a good card. It would be a good first fight of a fight card, but not a main event or even a co-feature bout.

“What is Ward’s reluctance?” Sanchez said. “Barrera is a legit 175. If Ward beats a legit 175, he can shut a lot of haters up and the Kovalev fight becomes even bigger!”

Ward can definitely quiet many of his critics if he beats Barrera. However, there’s also a chance that Ward could lose to Barrera, or be made to struggle really badly to get a victory. In that case, the critics would have a field day in going after Ward and say he’s just a phony and doesn’t belong at light heavyweight. Barrera is a real 175lb fighter, and not a mediocre out of shape super middleweight like Ward’s last opponent Paul Smith.